Rebecca L. Cann

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Rebecca Louise Cann (* 1951 in Burlington (Iowa) ) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist. She is known from a publication on Mitochondrial Eve in 1987.

Cann grew up in Des Moines and San Francisco. In 1972 she received her bachelor's degree in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley , and then worked for the pharmaceutical company Cutter Laboratories in Berkeley from 1972 to 1977. While working on serum from macaques, she also learned techniques for building a phylogenetic family tree. She then went back to study at Berkeley University and received her PhD in genetics with Allan Wilson in 1982 . In the meantime, molecular genetics, and also human genetics, in which she was particularly interested, had made significant advances with the use of restriction enzymes (when she finished her studies in 1972, there was nothing to be said for it) and her doctoral supervisor Allan Wilson was in favor of developing the idea of ​​molecular Clock known. The anthropologist Vince Sarich was also at the laboratory , who also had a strong influence on her. As a post-doctoral student she was at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of San Francisco and from 1986 she taught at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. She is Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Hawaii in Manoa.

Her work on human ancestry from studying mitochondrial DNA from people of different origins (Asia, South Pacific, Europe, African-American) was based on her doctoral thesis. Student Mark Stoneking added genetic samples from Australian Aborigines and Native Americans of New Guinea. The work by Cann and colleagues appeared in Nature in 1987 after some delay (it had been submitted in 1985). According to this, the ancestors of today's people can all be traced back to an ancestral mother who lived in Africa around 200,000 years ago.

She then dealt with the genetic investigation of human evolution, in particular similarities that early humans shared with animal species that are endangered today (small population, gender differences in behavior, risks of infectious diseases, geographical isolation).

In 2016 she received the Chemical Pioneer Award .

She was married twice. Her first marriage was in 1972 (the marriage was also the reason why she temporarily interrupted her studies and instead helped her husband finish his studies). Her second marriage is to Lenny Freed, with whom she also works on the phylogeny of endangered bird species in the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge.

Fonts

  • with Allan Wilson, Mark Stoneking: Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution, Nature, Volume 325, 1987, pp. 31-36
  • with M. Stoneking: African origin of human mitochondrial DNA. In: P. Mellars, C. Stringer (Eds.), The Human Revolution: Behavioral and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans, Edinburgh University Press, 1989, pp. 17-30
  • with Allan Wilson: The recent african genesis of humans, Scientific American, April 1992
  • Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution. In: JP Changeux, J. Chavaillon (Eds.), Origins of the Human Brain, Oxford University Press 1996.
  • Mothers, Labels, and Misogyny, in LD Hager (Eds.), Womens in Human Evolution, Routledge 1997, Chapter 4, pp. 75-89
  • with KC Diller: Evidence against a genetic-based revolution in language 50,000 years ago. In: R. Botha, C. Knight (Eds.), The Cradle of Language, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 135-149.
  • with KC Diller: Molecular perspectives on human evolution. In: KR Gibson, M. Tallerman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, Oxford University Press 2011.
  • with Karl C. Diller: Genetic influences on language evolution: an evaluation of the evidence, in: KR Gibson, M. Tallerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, Oxford University Press 2011.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cann et al. a .: Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution, Nature, Volume 325, 1987, pp. 31-36. PMID 3025745
  2. ↑ Wilson did not submit it to Science because he was New Zealander and preferred Nature
personal data
SURNAME Cann, Rebecca L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cann, Rebecca Louise (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geneticist and molecular biologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Burlington, Iowa